USFS Get Up Champions

2021 Champion Paula Martinez-Faccio

Paula received more than one nomination for this year's award for showing tremendous courage and determination this year. Here is Paula's story as written by her mother, Janice Faccio.

Paula Martinez Faccio was born in Portland Oregon on February 12, 2005. Paula has an older brother. Paula started skating when she was 4 years old, out of curiosity and for fun. Immediately she fell in love with the sport and asked her mom if she could compete like the older kids at the rink. After 2 months skating recreationally, she began working with her coach Mari Malama. From that point, Paula started progressing amazingly fast, she was competition ready only after 2 years of training with a coach, so far it has 10 years in total as a competitive level figure skater. She is currently still in love with the sport and is looking forward to the day she can become a coach. Paula was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) in 2013, and in 2014 she was diagnosed with an eating disorder. During these difficult times she was unable to skate for over 4 months. Having been able to go back to skating, gave her the strength to overcome the eating disorder. Paula was able to go back to the ice and continue with her training and is fully recovered from most of her adversities.

2020 was another difficult period for Paula, the pandemic closed her school, skating rink, and like every kid in our nation has been riddled with many challenges, starting online school, online skating training, limited access to be with friends. At home her family try everything to keep life and activities as normal as possible, so during the summer break, Paula traveled to Colorado Spring to train for 2 weeks, once back in Oregon, the family was driving her 2 ½ hours away 4 times a week for her to train with her coaches and friends. Once school started, she was only able to skate 3 or less days a week, but she was giving her best to make sure she was ready for the competition season.

During summertime, Paula started having random intermittent tics, however these were increasing in intensity and frequency. During winter, one day after skating, the coaches noticed something was not right with Paula, they reach out to her parents to share their concerns, they communicated that Paula was unable to skate that day, she was unable to communicate, her tics where so constant, and her speech impacted with a heavy stutter, they proceeded to take her immediately to the emergency room. After a week of doctor’s visits, and evaluations, she was diagnosed with Tourette Syndrome. Paula was unable to skate for at least 3 weeks. She is back skating now, only twice a week for 1 session each day, some days are good, and she can skate most of the hour, others, she is out after 10 or 15 minutes of ice time. Her coaches and team are so awesome, that they have made accommodations on the ice to make sure it is safe for her. Paula is only allowed to do moves while skating. Her doctors recommended she does not jump or spin for now to make sure she is safe on the ice. She is determined to test for her Senior moves in the field, sometime this year. Paula has shown much courage during these difficult times and is doing everything she can to overcome her ailments and does not give up her hopes of being able to go back to her normal self soon. We are so immensely proud of her and her courage. She is incredibly open with her condition despite sometimes feeling embarrassed of her symptoms. She wants to make sure people know this will not stop her to get her from achieving her goals and dreams.

Paula is a wonderful young lady, living her dreams and is making sure that Tourette or any other ailment does not determine her life, her life and future depends only on what she makes of it. Nothing will stop her to be the best she can be. 

Congratulations Paula, we couldn't be more proud of your achievements!